Art and Design Commons^™

Untitled, Gabriela Short

Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Bar Rat, Macky Bliss

Art Journal

My main influences are usually the people who surround me, and the experiences that I face because of those people. Working as a bartender has directly impacted my art. Faces, expressions, emotions and behaviors intrigue me. Bartending allows me to be a participant in and observer of many unique human interactions and social codes that I use as material for my work. I often photograph the people I interact with, especially while bartending, to use as source material.

For a while I was focusing on extreme emotions such as grief, but I have become more interested in the nuances of …

Camera Roll, Ashley Coutu

Art Journal

As an artist I work freely amongst all mediums, though my main medium is photography. This body of work is a photographic self-portrait over time focusing on the last four years of my life. I have documented my everyday activities by saving every image I have ever taken on my phone and camera.

Within the body of photographs I am including screen-captures of conversations I have saved that once shared a very personal meaning to me. Arranged in chronological order, my documentation provides a visual picture of my memories and emotions with friends, significant others, family, and my own personal …

Speaking My Language: Color And Geometry, Janelle Dunham

Art Journal

The first step in developing a geometric language that combines physical and digital processes: sketching with a mechanical pencil. With every sketch I consider the erasure markings, the horizontal or vertical composition, the intensity of each shape or line, the simplicity or complexity of each design, and the symmetry each design may or may not have. My designs reflect the influence of abstract artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich in addition to Bauhaus artists such as Josef Albers and Paul Klee.

The second step is to bring these sketches into Adobe Illustrator software, because it allows for the …

Endogenous, Rachele Romano

Art Journal

In my work I explore the exterior parts and interior sensations of the body, using both recognizable and imaginative abstract elements. Through this work I address issues affecting the body, specifically physical, sexual and verbal abuse. I’m interested in moments of trauma and their effects on the body. In my paintings I raise the questions: what goes on in the body? What could go on inside the body? What happens in the mind of person during a time of fear, and how does the body react to that? What would this look like on a canvas? My work explores the …

Art Journal 2015 - Vantage

Art Journal

No abstract provided.

.Psd, Kate Ryan

Art Journal

When I began this project, I was equipped with an extensive Photoshop vocabulary; I decided that my thesis would involve expanding this vocabulary and establishing new personal ways of making an image. My goal is to create a body of work that cannot be replicated on any other platform. I use color, texture, shape, line, and layering to showcase Photoshop and my firm grasp of the program. My work has seen many transformations, and this is where the success of each piece lies. I have always been attracted to the ability within Photoshop to infinitely edit and layer my projects. …

Skeptical Magnetism, Olivia Myers

Art Journal

My work examines the idea of distortion of the human face. Many of my drawings focus on the nose, the element of the face that I find most structural. The idea of the face as a flat object and the nose protruding out, almost looking as if it is placed on the face, is very interesting to me, perhaps connecting back to my fascination with architectural structures. I have used the nose as the main focus of distortion, oversized and often asymmetrical. These exaggerations should make the viewer feel as if they could crawl into this opening and explore its …

Thanks For Having Us, Ryan Martin

Art Journal

My work depicts late-adolescent masculinity and the sometimes suspect behavior attached to it. I represent a type of lifestyle that is generally familiar from college sports and chum movies, which I treat with humor and aggression. I approach it in a personal way, recording my own daily life with my friends and describing these moments with found materials and messy demanding mark-making. I often select imagery from the past that deals with male role models, for example my heroic Grandfather, Evel Knievel, movie characters, and manipulate those pictures through cutting, painting, embroidery, digital drawing, and wood burning. My work uses …

Arsy Varsy, Kristen Kern

Art Journal

My goal in my work is to connect to people through stories. I use my characters and narratives to turn people inward towards their own lives; my drawings may remind them of a person, a place, an event, or an experience or emotion. I use ink and Photoshop, which are clear, easy to read, and familiar. This is one way in which my art evokes the feel of comics, cartoons, video games, and other geek-culture influences from my childhood and today. I gravitate most noticeably toward the aesthetic of Japanese manga, applying various elements of this aesthetic to nearly all …

Kinetic Meditation, Katherine Kaiser

Art Journal

My goal as an artist is to produce work that is compelling as well as tranquil, that invites exploration and immersion. There is a certain familiarity that is portrayed by my work: the marks often reference environmental forms such as leaves, twigs, roots and branches. However, I purposefully paint in an ambiguous fashion, leaving the mind open to wander in a dreamlike state.

I want to connect to the energy found in nature by implementing two types of painting languages. The juxtaposition between the serenity of pouring paint and the sharp kinetic energy of my hand-drawn marks creates a balance …

Journey, Jessica Ho

Art Journal

Through my work, I would like to show that even though we are our own individuals, we are also all part of a global culture. As a Chinese American, I am part of a community in which Kung Fu is prevalent and I have spent a great deal of time studying it, along with many of my family members and friends. I believe that Kung Fu is a unique way to bridge cultural gaps; it aids in a mutual understanding in a way that language often fails to do. It is an art that is able to cross existing cultural …

The Auto Show, Jessica Ho

Art Journal

I intend to create an auto show displaying the various cars of my own design. The palette of colors and the mosaic surfaces give the cars more personality and also emphasizes the various characteristics of the car that make it a unified whole. Overall, my work combines my interests in both automotive and digital imaging to portray the cars as works of art, rather than just a means of transportation.

I would like to show that every automobile has its own unique personality, because each car has a distinctive shape, color, height, engine design, gear ratio, driving wheel, and a …

Plainville, Kara Flanagan

Art Journal

In my work I explore a dimension of my childhood that is usually not spoken of. I photograph sites that I inhabited as a child, many of which are abandoned today. These places refer to the psychological experience of being left behind by a parent and they bring back specific memories of events that occurred there. Additionally, the act of rexposure to the sites is a way of trauma intervention that is the core to this work.

When I revisit the sea-saw I used to ride, the elementary school I attended, or the church I got baptized at, I have …

Head First Only, Grant Bay

Art Journal

As an artist, my primary medium is painting. For reference, I look at found photographs and captured video stills, coupled with ideas from my imagination and sketchbook. I take compositions that are populated with objects and figures that are recognizable and make them strange. My intent is to make a viewer feel at once engaged and disoriented, with visual surprises and logical discontinuities in spatial relations.

My paintings seem fictionalized, containing passages that are clearly not from observed reality. I am interested in the experience of longing for a relationship that cannot be attained. Relationships between individuals can be imagined …

Art Journal 2014 - Bound

Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Acclimation, Rory Dlugos

Art Journal

In fragmenting the human figure, I hope to express loss of control or the inability to know one’s future. On a daily basis, I am bombarded with this anxiety-ridden dilemma. In my work, this struggle manifests itself in the figures’ expressions and poses. The seamless integration of figures into the background can be seen as their successful ability to merge with their changing environment; in other words, a positive adaptation of self.

At other times, the figure-background dichotomy represents the struggle to adapt to change and maintain a constantly evolving, healthy self. In some works, the figures are rooted in …

60, Casey Cullen

Art Journal

Through my body of work, 60, I aim to convey my confusion of learning a new style of photography along with the uncertainty of identity. The confusion of what is going on in the photograph coincides with the unfamiliarity of the camera and the more general disorientation of everyday life. My photographs question different methods of photography through the use of an old process while also questioning the term “portrait.” Working with a camera that has been surpassed and forgotten about has allowed me to keep the process alive. A large format camera enables me to have more freedom in …

Memory Tokens, Julia Christ

Art Journal

My work deals with memory and the affliction of forgetfulness. Memories start out vivid and get washed over, dulled. New experiences cover up those of the past, and the authority of our memories is called into question. Like most humans, I collect memories compulsively; like souvenirs in a hoarder’s obsessive sanctuary, those memories start to pile up. They become indistinguishable and forgotten. These collected memory tokens, whether or not they are consciously acknowledged, trigger different emotional responses and forever influence my identity.

When I revisit a place, I am brought back to events that previously occurred there; multitudes of past …

Solitaire, Dominic Channon

Art Journal

Commencing with the characteristics of my self as an only child, a distance runner, and an heir to my father's nomadic behavior, I have become interested in developing a further concept of self based on our capability to form our knowledge and interpretation of the world to our being. The experimentation with time and perception through the use of the camera has become my obsession. I want to create balance and repose through my work, challenging the perception of what it is that we know. My challenge is to create work that maintains these consistencies yet renders subject matter in …

Hide And Seek, Tess Wilson

Art Journal

I see myself as an analyst of my surroundings. I have a predisposition for noticing and appreciating miniscule details in life. Consequently, I take photographs and make digital drawings of found objects that possess textured qualities. Whether walking to class, waiting for the train, even sitting in my kitchen at home, texture is everywhere.

My collages are meant to avoid fixity; but most especially, my collages are meant to confront the notion of abstraction and reality. Through digital imaging, I alter reality by manipulating the color, light and detail of an object at close range. To me, abstraction is a …

Christian Conversion: The Spiritual Transformation Of Eastern Pagan Structures In Late Antiquity, Alexandra Fallone

Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Yellow, Red, And Blue: A Symbolic And Linguistic Analysis Of Gendered Colors In Xix Dynasty Egyptian Mortuary Art, Carolyn Dedeo

Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Art Journal 2013 - Musings

Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Pennsylvania Noir, Bridget Reed

Art Journal

Distant vestiges of memory incite my art making. By examining my biographical past through various scopes, I can extract key memory perceptions for further investigation.

In my work, I physically construct models of memories to correlate to the mental process of memory reconstruction. The very nature of memory is devoid of a logical progression or stability. Imagery loses clarity, moving in and out of our consciousness. The memories often become muddled creating passages that can be fleshed out by intuitive impulses. Therefore, the structure is built to contain the fleeting memories so I can extract meaning from them. Individually crafting …

On The Other Side, Nathalie Coughlin

Art Journal

It is human nature to want to live in an ordered world and to organize our lives through plans and rules. We tend to find security in routines and like creatures of habit we rarely stray outside of our comfort zones.

My work deals with creating a sense of dislocation to take our statically ordered worlds and contort them slightly. The cows and organic shapes in my paintings are supposed to elicit the feeling of a connection with the viewer. The fences, rock walls, and other physical barriers are a formal choice to present this dislocation. Metaphorically, the barriers in …

Connotations: An Exploration Of Iphoneography, Justine Harrington

Art Journal

Language is the most systemized and direct method of human expression; it is the medium by which groups and individuals convey, communicate and understand. We most directly and effectively reveal our identity through sharing language with others.

A similar situation exists in the expressive function of visual imagery. Much of my work abstracts and interprets the nature of objective reality, notably in visual relationships between space, lines and edges. I think of my artworks as extensions of a distinct visual language, and the vocabulary by which I abstract and compose is communicated in a systemized manner similar to language forms. …

Eye Witness, Elise Costello

Art Journal

Ballet is my passion. Through the movements of dance, my body and mind can become one. In this state, the actions are performed with muscle memory; there is almost a mindlessness that all athletes have to maintain in order to be able to lose themselves to movement.

My project allows me to fully understand what goes on in this semi-mindless state, and allows me to analyze it intellectually outside the arena of performance. I use a high-speed camera to capture and isolate the steps involved in each movement. I can use the images to study the particular muscles and motions …

In The Palm Of His Hands, Shana Kakareka

Art Journal

In my work, I explore a topic that generates a never-ending series of questions for me: my faith. People hold so many various personal beliefs according to their faith. For one to believe so strongly in something and be able to place all of their trust in their faith when they have no certainty is fascinating. One message that I connect with immensely in my faith was delivered to me through a song called “On Eagles’ Wings.” This song resonates with me because it reminds me that even though unexpected things happen in life, God is always watching over and …

Fog Emotion, Amanda Dailey

Art Journal

My bodies of work are mental stepping-stones towards an intrapersonal discovery. I am in pursuit of understanding the seemingly endless psychological chaos unraveling inside my mind. These images are highly personal conceptual representations that aim to demonstrate the strains of separation anxiety, and the physical and psychological changes of pregnancy. They are abstract enough to encourage individual interpretation, while still allowing the viewer access to the window of my mind and body. By choosing and combining images that are individually strong, I am able to create pieces that are emotionally complex and powerful.